What Went Wrong with Google Plus?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- When Google announced that it was going to use all its power and marketing clout to launch a rival social media platform called Google+, experts were tipping Google to kick Facebook off the social
graph altogether, and Facebook was running scared for a while.
But despite attracting 300 million users, Google+ ended up running around in circles for years, and ultimately became Google’s biggest ever failure. So, what exactly went wrong?
Simon's Social Media:
Twitter: / simonwhistler
Instagram: / simonwhistler
Simon's Other Channels:
TodayIFoundOut: / todayifoundout
TopTenz: / toptenznet
Biographics: / @biographics
Visual Politik: / @visualpolitiken
Highlight History: / @highlighthistory
Geographics: / @geographicstravel
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This is like drunk 'Today I found out.' ..... That is NOT a criticism I like 'Today I found out' and I like being drunk.
Me too. To both.
It's like Today I Found Out if the boss was out for the day. But we all know Simon's the Boss.
This is like Fact Fiend with just Karl
@@bens5661 perfect
@@zappawench6048 yea I was going to say today I found out after simon just got laid lol
I can't tell you how much I love the casual nature of this channel.
:) glad you enjoy it, I know its quite different to my regular stuff :)
@@brainblaze6526 I think all your videos are A++.
Rotating Platypus I love be it too! ❤️
Come for the random useless focused on small insignificant facts... Stay for the casual natured relaxed funny genius... With memes.
Love all the channels and this one is by far my favorite
I have something of a saying: "If you have to force it on me, it's not worth it." I resented having to be forced into something I didn't want to sign up to, and refused to partake in anything other than the necessaries out of sheer spite.
If I wasn't forced, I might have been interested in looking into it
Same, except I actively told people it sucked because of how they forced me to signup. Still have the profile picture to prove it.
I definitely agree, completely felt like if I have to sign up for it I’m not gonna use it. If it turned out that I had heard about it and it was good and I had joined in on my own I’m sure I would’ve used it a lot
This is basically how I am with sponsorships. If you have to pay everyone under the sun to say fake lies about how great your product is... It probably isn't actually that good and I won't use it. Ever.
I don't remember being forced to have Google +. I remember having + because I had a Google e-mail. I tried to use it, but never figured out how to actually join a group. Like the group for Ingress.
I will defend Google+ in this way.
I was an active user.
It was ad free.
The circles was a way to limit your stream or focus the attention, as well as limit exposure of posts (great for controversial topics).
They had communities that acted like the Facebook groups.
And they had collections that could be followed for the niche interests.
The reason it failed, beyond the forcing of sign-ups, is the lack of advertising within the Google product lines. They also failed to get enough traction with the sign in under G+ like Facebook has. Also, the fact that it was ad free made Google execs angry to no end as there was a loss of revenue on the platform. Companies would shy away from the platform due to to the down voting of ad like posts.
It had potential that was severely mismanaged. Where Twitter is a soapbox, Facebook is high school, LinkedIn is a networking party, G+ was the university coffeehouse.
But I cannot stress this enough, what made it great was the lack of ads. Only user content.
Yeah, the communication on what it was was way off. But also re: ads, they would come at some point. FB also was ad free at the start, eventually money has to be made. I'm sure people also prefer TH-cam channels without ads, but money is kinda needed eventually.
@@brainblaze6526 it was actually one of the core aspects that would have made it an effective Facebook killer. Given that the data would be available to all of the Google economy, including adsense, there would be no need on G+ as that is the source of much of the relevant data.
The proof of that is that they kept G+ around after ending the public version and now offer it to businesses to compete against slack.
@@ClintUdy agreed, and props for stating your case so eloquently.
How many users were bots,algorythms,or political propaganda performers though? It was almost as hard to find genuine users on there than myspace was after it got overrun with complexities. I liked that it was clear and simple,like fb was back when it worked.
@@drphosferrous in my experiences bots were minimal. The community actively reported them.
Political propoganda performers exist on every social platform. The difference here was that it was easy to ignore them. One had to actively search out such to engage them. Community moderators would block them quickly if they became even remotely abusive. Even when engaged, it was almost always more like a proper discussion of ideas.
Yeah, having your other Google accounts held hostage tends to make people grumpy.
Yes, forcing me to join under hostage situations was the end for me.
Beyond being forced to sign up I never even opened G+ to see what it looked like. So yeah, I had an account but it meant absolutely nothing to me. Likewise a few hundred million other people.
@@Kevin-mx1vi I honestly didn't even know Google+ was a social platform, I thought it was just a single sign in for all your google apps.
...I still use what's left of it for that.
Comment I noticed a few years ago:
"Why do porn sites have a Google+ link? I don't want my friends and family to know that I have a Google+ account."
I better get to hear “business daddy” many more times!!
I could go all meta and do a video on TH-cam...
@@brainblaze6526 Um, yes please.
@@brainblaze6526 That would be amazing!
damn simon, when'd you get so sassy?
... i like it
Sassy Simon
The hand on his hip and the smirk on his face is cracking me up. I subscribe to all of his channels but this one is the best so far.
I was an avid Google+ user, I really enjoyed it, liked the circles as a means of curating incoming and outgoing content, and I was on board so early, someone included me in a shared circle of Google developers, because at that point, it was basically Google employees, a handful of journalists (one of whom I got my invite from), and Wil Wheaton.
Google+'s early days were excellent. Functionally, it was all there, the site was nice and light weight. Then Google decided to just Google all over it. Google+ got immeasurably worse to use when they tried to integrate it with TH-cam. It got far worse when they axed Google Talk in favour of Hangouts (we already HAD all those features, Hangouts was an objective step backwards in every way!). To add insult to injury, instead of a sensible, clean, linear UI, they decided to make it look like Pinterest, with multiple columns of information-light cards. You could seriously fit less than a tweet and a photo in the small preview cards, forcing you to click them to expand them, and that version of the site was not just ugly, but also resource intensive. Chrome's RAM usage just ballooned out whenever I had a Google+ tab open.
Think about it: Google has made two products which are actually good, search, and Gmail. Every other successful thing they have is something they've bought. Maps, Android, TH-cam, all acquisitions. Chrome is a joke (literally, the name is a joke). They took the open source Webkit rendering engine, and wrote a new UI for it, the UI of a program being called in slang, the "chrome". Google made the chrome on the browser, not the browser! Everything else Google has made, they end up destroying. Either they bloat it, or they tie it into stuff that nobody likes, or they force ridiculous changes on it that nobody wanted, and usually, they kill other perfectly good features and services in the process. Google's approach to messaging was another problem. They have had like six messaging platforms in the past five years, and for a time, there were two of them in Google+!
Nowadays, I have absolutely zero faith in anything Google creates, and even if it's a good product, I have zero faith they won't run it for 12-18 months before pulling the plug. That's why you won't catch me within smelling distance of Google Stadia.
The reason Google Plus was going to fail is because who Google hires. If you know the Big Bang theory show, a lot of their employees are "Sheldon"s. They have the technical ability to do clever things, but they lack in being human. So the idea that a room full of Sheldons would make a social site was just ridiculous. It might operate well, but it wasn't going to be what normal humans want, which is why only a few people actually used it.
Google seems to have a hiring policy of hiring director competitors and continually having no clue why they're getting worse.
I love how personable Simon is in this series, it's a nice change from his rather stiff (but still intriguing) persona from "Today I Found It"
coming soon:
"what went wrong with google stadia?"
What went wrong with google glasses ?
@@Espen.Johannesen It became Google Lens and powers their various image recognition products.
@slam zamillion We don't need a video that short lmao
the answer is everything
FYI Simon I really enjoy the inclusion of the “Devil Simon” red screen. I know a winner win I see one. I love the flash to red and the deep voice saying “Destroy Facebook” . Needless to say I have a fever and the only prescription is more Devil Simon. Keep it up!
DESTROY FACEBOOK.
The cock of the walk, baby!!
This is absolute gold, they need to let Simon make the other channels as fun as this oh my goodness i love him to pieces. Shell you have outdone your self.
:) :). Really glad you are enjoying it!
They'd probably be demonetized and alienate their audiences
Don't fix what ain't broken
I actually liked Google + much more than Facebook, though I acknowledge that I'm very much in the minority.
Google plus is still way nicer and better than Facebook.
A Minority that was millions strong
Same here. I'm on Facebook now but Plus was just way better.
Honestly I would never touch Facebook after knowing it's just a wasteland of crap and more crap.
I'm with you there!
What I liked most about G+ is that it was a group of social media users basically running away from the toxicity of other platforms. It had fewer users but I got along with most of them. Also communities were dope.
"Ah shit I clicked on Google+ again"
Lol, literal mood.
8:38 "It's OK Google"
Cheers buddy - way to trigger my phone!
"people were spending an average of five seconds on G+"
'oh shit I clicked on Google Plus again'
😂😂 It's funny because it's unfortunately true.
It's tragic fate was looking so clear.
I only watch this guy's Top 10 videos when TH-cam recommends them, I didn't even know he did other content so it feels strange seeing him with a personality, lol. I should stop fighting and just subscribe
Just do it. You won’t regret it... well you might, maybe you’ll hate the videos. Hopefully not though.
@@brainblaze6526 I like em so far. Keep em coming...
@@soulife8383 fun fact: Simon is taking over TH-cam. No, it's not slow either.
@@dudepool7530 he's forcing himself on us like Google+ did!
I hope you became a legend and watched a of Simon's channel (I mean it's 2020 what else are you going to do 😇)
Great one Simon! I’m loving Business Blaze! 😆 And that John Oliver reference... priceless! I’ve actually often said to myself that Last Week Tonight should hire you when John decides to retire.
Hahhaha, that would be epic.
Here, here!!
Google Plus was where everyone hung out while they were in Facebook jail.
I used Orkut most of 2000 years, everyone here in Brazil had one and nowadays there are many people who try to recreate locally the website
The "circles" feature is what made GooglePlus seem like it was devoid of content. Your friends might have been posting, but you weren't seeing all of them as each post was only sent to a subset of their friends. Circles meant that everyone posting needed to be aware of what their friends were into, unlike facebook where you post about some topic only to discover your grandmother used to run the fan club 40 years ago!
If someone had (say) 10 circles then to make GooglePlus look like it had as much content as Facebook everyone would have to post 10x the content, which only a person with 10x the amount of free time is going to do.
End result it was a social site that looked devoid of content, so did not look very social.
Knutsen - kuh-noot-sen. Son of Knut. England had a king Knut but these days it's usually spelled Canute.
I had a Gmail account and that got me on Google Plus even though I had no want of it .Google simply pissed me off.
Google+ was actually the only social media group that I used in addition to TH-cam. It was going fine until porn kept popping up on my home page. I even reached out to Google for help, but nothing changed. That's when I stopped using it prior to it's demise.
Ahhh the internet.
Wait, there was porn on G+? How???
No mention of Google Wave? It seemed super promising at the time, and somehow failed so spectacularly I never got to use it! What happened?
Whatever coffee you drink, you should see if they will sponsor an episode. What energy!
Oh no. You set off my Android phone at 8.46 when you said "ok Google" thanks!
I love these because it shows so much more of your personality 😂
Glad you're enjoying them :)
Google plus really sounds like it was designed more for school or work use. Like a teacher making a circle to share things with the students or a boss sharing the schedule
The moment porn sites added a +1 button, Google Plus was done for
There was to much Porn on G+...Indians were too bizzy posting too much nudies frm India especially...Kinda Sick...!!!
@@nasreensaher Baloney. I used the platform from beginning to end and saw almost no porn there at all.
@@josephteller9715 Surprising u didn't notice...There were all over especially frm India..Pakistan...And so many other countries...
@Agent J yea....I remember one community...'Indian girls'...Main pic of a beautiful Indian Lady clad in a beautiful saree...As u browse thru...Voila...Contents just sic...!
@@nasreensaher oh noes not a naked woman...
I remember when this launched it forced me to make a second TH-cam channel all cause I didnt want my branding to be changed to my real name for my main channel. It made things confusing at the start.
I remember when Google is started and you had to get an invite to the beta version. I was so stoked. Manged to get one. Got just my first name for a my username. So stoked and then.....nothing.
I remember getting that Gmail invite back in the day, that was cool.
I really wanted to join when it first started but i didn't really care anymore by the time they made it public.
"Running around in circles..."
Ahhhh...I see what you did there...😂😂😂😂
I used G+ for a while.
It showed promise at first.
Recommended for me to watch: TopTenz video on 10 reasons to be afraid of Google LOL
I signed up for Google+ because of youtube requirement. But... was there an app or something I was supposed to download? I never logged in anywhere.
I remember Google+ because Google took over TH-cam and messed up my existing TH-cam login. So now I have 2 TH-cam accounts, one of which I don't use. Google also messed up my Blogger/Blogspot login.
Love your vids! You didn't link the Bing story!!
" Do you pronounce the silent 'K'"?
When he said "it doesn't look like Facebook is going anywhere" I checked the date on the video assuming it was years old but it's not. Is Facebook really still a thing in some places because as far as I know Facebook is dead. I don't know a single person that uses it in my community despite being popular just a couple years back
It's for old people who like to argue.
I really love to see this side of you Simone! Keep it up.
Thanks :)
You really should delve into the story of Preston Tucker at some point. It’s a very interesting and unfortunate tale of a man with a grand vision.
Great video, as per usual! Could you do one on the dumpster fire that is Tumblr??
I loved google+ and used it almost every day as a kind of reddit lite that also handled all my youtube comments
I knew a former contractor for google and the project they worked on suddenly had to integrate with +, inside the company there was no warning just suddenly YOU HAVE TO WORK WITH + apparently delayed a bunch of other things being worked on
Given how much Simon knows about movies in general, I'm loving the Cannes poster in the background.
Love the John Oliver reference. Please do a Business Baby vs Business Daddy impression!
I actually miss google plus. I was 14 when it shut down, but from the ages of 12-14 it was my number 1 hang out. I remember the art and roleplaying communities were POPPING
Another channel??
I respect the grind
12:03 Knutson(Nut son ) spilled the beans 😂😂😂 I see what you did there Danny
I like this channel. It's fun to see more of Simon's personality in these videos.
Thanks :)
It might have worked well, but it was rammed down our throats. Like a lot of consumers/users, I enjoyed that. Also like a few other users, I had a blank account that never used even once.
At least when you connected to it, G+ didn't wipe your entire TH-cam subscriptions, I remember that happening, was pissed, then from then on I watched google screw up TH-cam
remember when they tried to make youtube more business focused removeing the old personal profile type homepage all to try and make it a social media platform years later, trying to force you to make your account name your name
Lol I love this version of business facts and info lol and Simon is having a blast. 🤣
The initial statement wasn't bad, what was bad was that they skipped the part where they examine the enemy and actually plan out how they are going to destroy them. So, they had a premise with no plan for execution and no cohesion. Total implementation failure.
Damn,Simon,HOW many channels do you have? LOL. Just found these yesterday and loving them. I really like the loose feeling and you being you the entire time. Great vids and concept. But yeah,thanks,another channel i have to follow. LOL
Seven total, at the moment :)
@@brainblaze6526 Damn, are you TRYING to take over the internet? 😂😂😂😂
I'm surprised no-one has done a profile yet on Simon Whistler, I can't think of any other TH-cam personality that has gained near the exposure that he has...it's like I'm finding myself caught...in a...trend...OH NOOO!!!!! I'M FOLLOWING THE CROWD!!!! NONONONO HELP!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂 lol jk Honestly, if this is a trend then I'm all in for following...👍👍👍👍
Business Blaze I’m really enjoying this casual Simon enjoying the fuck out the content you’re sharing. Excellent.
You did not link the bing video in the description now i need to type 3 words into the youtube search...
Orkut was actually massively popular in Brazil. It was invite-only so people were salivating to join. It was basically Facebook before Facebook. It died when FB launched because Brazilians like all things American so we jumped ship.
the REAL reason is: G+ was actually a way better platform at the start, but because they were so late in coming to the party, by the time G+ came on the scene, everyone was already heavily invested in Facebook, and so didn't want to switch. The rest of that followed because they were still trying to make it work (as you mentioned). I had a community on Facebook, and I tested out G+ groups function immediately. the features were so much better, so much more integrated with the rest of Google. I could share videos from my TH-cam, photos from my Picassa account (now Google Photos) build an associated website... live Hangouts...maybe this contributed to the security concerns, but it eliminated many of the limitations that my Facebook group had. I got only two people to even go look at it. Most said that all of their family and business contacts were already on Facebook and they didn't want to duplicate everything
Dude, Orkut was effing huge in the pre-facebook world! I remember there being a huge community who'd organize raves and stuff over it.
So sad, Simon didnt catch the running around in circles line around 2min in.
I dont think I every used google plus, but I remember circles being part of the service.
Video 10. 24 days after video 1. Danny is back. Simon is getting crazier.
Google plus, what went wrong (editor: "everything")
Great job Sam
I used to love G+, but a big part of that was the fact that 'nobody else used it' - I had a nice set of people I could communicate with regularly with it without having everyone and their angry cat memes jump in and mess around. The ability to contain your community was very handy. But my use-case was obviously not a good one for a large scale business model...
Running around in "circles". smh
My husband signed up for G+ the day it came out and got me in a day or two later. We tried to use it for months, all our college friends were on it, but none of our older family members were on it. We LOVED Circles. I could keep my friends, online buddies, fanfic readers and coworkers separate from my highly conservative family. I get grief now for Facebook posts that tick off my family, because I didn't click to exclude individuals. We ended up posting our photos on both Facebook and G+ together so our older family members could see it, so... we gave up. We still use Hangouts to chat, but none of our friends use it. Just the two of us. Kinda feels intimate that way.
That photo streaming feature would be so hopeful now
I almost can't keep up with all the videos in your channels!! Really love them.
My masterplan is working.
Google is being sued for security breaches over this so..... it keeps getting worse.
I have spent at least a whole day bingeing these videos
The circles thing does sound cool. I wish Facebook had that.
But yeah, it was shitty getting basically forced to sign up to use TH-cam and Gmail.
I do the 'circle' thing on Facebook by making friend lists. shoved all old people and randoms into the acquaintance list so they don't see me sharing surreal memes at 3am
Im from India, Orkut was a big hit over here. we created several pages, groups and friends to connect with college pals before facebook was everywhere.
I actually didn't know it was a social media platform. I remember the time when Google tried to flog it at every turn, and I might have been forced to make an account on some point, but I could never be arsed to check out what it really was.
this is now my favorite channel he has, been watching him since 2016, and i love how involved he is here, instead of just informative. Just so funny.
Thanks :)
I really liked G+. It had a lot of really cool features. The thing is, it was pushed too hard and people hated it. If Google was more patient and chill people would come. More importantly for me it seemed like a alternative to Twitter rather than Facebook. I really didn't care about people vacation photos, but discussing tech or politics or complaining about Google/TH-cam/Microsoft being crap was pretty great.
One of the only people who can use memes without being childish or cringey
I used google+ for travel information. I was part of several circles or groups where if an airline put out a low fair,,the group would send out alerts right away. I flew to Japan from Heathrow for £300 a few years ago
In a few years time, Simon will be doing one of these on Google Stadia.
remember when simon kept up the facade that this channel was about business? pepperidge farm remembers.
Livejournal had something similar to the Circles function of Google+, with one crucial difference: you didn’t get to know if you were added to a list nor who all was on it (short of commenting on a post limited to that list and seeing those other commenters). This was only available on private journals tho, but we also had communities that operated more or less like subreddits only without the upvote/downvote system.
...really I just miss Livejournal, am forever bitter it got bought out by Russia, and fandom moved to tumblr instead of Dreamwidth. Alas.
I never used G+. I only use gmail and they harass me about five times a day because I use Outlook to access it. It's really annoying.
Knutson (and its spelled variants) is pronounced with a voiced k, yes. Further the u is vocalized as "oo". Its largely a Norwegian name around here, but I'd imagine it'd exist anywhere descendant languages of Old Norse are common, since it literally means "Son of Knut", knut being cognate with the English "knot", which I am told once also had its k vocalized.
"Running around in _circles_" I see what you did there
I actually liked Google Plus a couple years ago. Mainly because of anime posts in it.
First time I saw an EP of biz blaze I was like "this isn't for me" but now I'm hooked. Love the relaxed style and Simon's comedy. Keep it up.
same
My main memory of google plus was watching Ray William Johnson beat up the logo at the end of each episode of Equals 3.
I didn't even know they ended it lol. I just remember them forcing everyone to get one.
I know this video is a little old but what ever happened to ask jeeves (probably spelled wrong), but it would be cool to touch on it
"This has been Business Blaze"....but, have you been Simon?!
Wasn't the closure of Google Plus a 2019 event as opposed to 2009?
In this episode, Simon goes full Alex Jones, 3:51-3:53
Google Plus is turning the frogs gay.
“Now I spend my life commenting on TH-cam videos “.....hey me too 👨🏻🦰👍
Man Simon I have watched every biographics for months and every geographics and a bunch of top tenz and a good chunk of today I found out seeing you be like serious and fun to listen to with all this interesting stuff. I've just recently found this channel and my god I love the casual funny format. It's kinda like spending a few years watching your headmaster do assembly and then one day he rocks in with an electric guitar and blows your mind
I really enjoy this format! I enjoy all your channels but this is more personality driven and you have a huge personality.
Thanks :)
I barely remember it.
Google+ what went wrong. EVERYTHING
Holy hell Simon, how many channels do you host
7 currently :)
@@brainblaze6526 if you ever need a co-host lemme know where to submit applications lol